Whole World Toilet Paper Museum on a roll with profile on Travel Channel

The Republican file photo | Don TreegerRichard and Floralee Newman, of Amherst, with some of the items from their toilet paper collection. The collection can be found online at tagyerit.com, the home of their Whole World Toilet Paper Museum, which will be featured on Jan. 22 on the Travel Channel in a show about bizarre collections.

One person’s trash can be another’s treasure, and a sheet of toilet paper inscribed with that bit of poetry by the famed creator of “A Prairie Home Companion” is among the riches to be found in an online toilet paper museum founded by Amherst residents Richard and Floralee Newman.

Their virtual collection, the Whole World Toilet Paper Museum, can be visited at tagyerit.com, the website of the couple’s band, Tagyerit. It can also be seen on TV on Jan. 22 at 11 p.m., when the Travel Channel will air a segment about bizarre collections.

“We started collecting in 1978. We never expected it to go this far. It’s been like a treasure hunt,” Rich Newman says.

“We don’t travel very much,” added Flo Newman. “So, originally our friends would go places and send us pieces, so we started with papers from all the places they went. Later, they started to get daring and they would get celebrities to sign.”

Now, some 2,500 samples of these functional paper products can be found stored in boxes in their home, ranging across time (dating back as much as a century) and across geography (representing countries on every continent but Antarctica.)

How many countries?

“It’s more like how many countries don’t we have,” Flo Newman said. “For years we wanted Transylvania, and we finally got a piece from there.”

The Republican file photo | Don Treeger An autograph of Lily Tomlin on a piece of toilet paper from the Newmans' collection.

However, it is the pieces bearing celebrity signatures that get the most interest, the couple said. Woody Allen, Madonna, Harrison Ford, Barbara Walters, Lily Tomlin and Sharon Stone are some of the signatures they have in their collection - in addition to Keillor’s.

They’ve received samples from some unusual sources.

“One Buddhist professor we know tried to get a piece from the bathroom of every monastery in China,” Rich Newman said.”A wrecking crew in Seattle was demolishing a place and they realized it was an old brothel. They sent us a piece from the bathroom,” Flo Newman said.

They have also been the recipient of other people’s collections.

Perhaps by default, they have become authorities on how toilet paper varies around the world and how it has changed through the years.

“Toilet paper has gotten more homogenized,” Flo Newman said. “Some of the old European paper was like crepe paper or wax paper, very rough and very colorful. Now, it’s a homogenous American white and soft.”